Growing worms in liquid

Inoculate each of several liters (4 is a good number) of LB in 2 liter
flasks with 1 ml of an overnight culture of AMA1004. Grow overnight at
37&3176;C and shake at 250 rpm.

Harvest by centrifugation in autoclaved 500 ml bottles at 4000 rpm for
10 min. (Use Sorvall and GS3 rotor in Montelone lab.) Pool cultures so
that you have one liter's worth of bacteria in a single 500 ml
bottle.

Add 25 ml of S Medium to each
bottle. Resuspend by shaking at 250 rpm
from 15-60 min at room temp.

Resuspended bacteria can be stored for several weeks at 4°C. You
may want to pool pellets from several liters of bacteria to save on
bottles and fridge space, label the pooled bottle how many liters-worth of
bacteria it contains.

Note: after step 2, the pellet can be weighed to determine the yield.
We should get 15-20 g of bacteria/liter.

Hypochloride treat a large plate of worms that have just starved and
add the resulting eggs to the flask. Shake at ~160 rpm at 20°C. The
worms should clear the bacteria in 4-5 days.

Progress of the worm culture can be monitored by removing aliquots and
examining them under the dissecting scope, but be careful not to
contaminate the culture! This is useful determining the ages of staged
cultures.

Harvesting the liquid culture...

Chill the culture on ice. Tilt the flask so that the worms collect in
the "corner". Once the worms have settled (15-60 min.), aspirate off most
of the media.

Collect the worms in 50-ml centrifuge tubes, as few as you
can.

Wash 1X with 0.1M NaCl, spin 2 min at 700 rpm. Use little or no
braking so that the worm pellet is not disturbed. Keeping the worms cold
also helps with this. If you had to use more than 50-ml tube for culture,
pool them now.

Spin for 5 min at 700 rpm. Worms should end up on top, suck them out
with at wide-mouthed pasteur pipet. Keep the tube on ice and work quickly
-- once the worms start to eat the sucrose they get heavier.

L2-L4s: same as L1s, but add more food and wait longer to harvest.
Monitor progress by examining an aliquot under the scope. L2s should take
about 20 hrs after feeding is started; about 30 hrs; L4s about 40
hrs.